Eliminate the Abuse Reporting Feature

Does the AR system accomplish anything constructive or is it just something that troublemakers play with to keep the Lindens busy and annoy other players because they think it's fun?

To me, people who neg rate (passe) and abuse report regularly have the same mentality as a run-of-the-mill griefer. They simply possess the common sense to grief from within the system rather than against the TOS.

I'll vote to just eliminate the system altogether.

I've only heard third-hand reports of the system being a problem, but I can see that it could have problems. Therefore my vote is currently undecided. F x

This is a subject Jake and I were just discussing and I am glad you introduced it for discussion. We agreed that the AR system is ineffective for a variety of reasons, but what challenged us was trying to come up with an alternative way to address griefing and/or harassment that would be more effective.

Jake & I would really love to see suggestions from members about the possible alternatives. Any ideas?

Anarchy.

Having seen and expereinced the level of abuse and personal attacks that go on in the forums, and seen the smug victory celebrations the attackers conduct to further ridicule the victims, on all side os any issue. I think the only thing wrong with the AR system is that it is under enforced.

The TOS is very clear about personal attacks, among other things, and yet very often such atacks are made and the victims are told to tough it out, or that it was not an attack, or that it is parody or ridicule. This is a place to debate issues, not to point out the failings of other users. Yet the real aim of he forums seems not to be the debate of issues but the insult and humiliations of people who don't agree with us. The recent feeding frenzy of personalaatacks surrounding the MJW shames us all.

Horifying to me is to look at fridays police blotter and see that in seven instances users were discisplined for personal attacks and intolerace. More horrifing is the thought that this is perhaps fewer than were deserved. I appluaud the lindens for taking a hard line and making a concerted effort to enforce the TOS. I think the sad truth is the AR system is painfully necesary, even though it should not be.

We all play second life, and we all have that in comonon. I suppose its just hard to remeber that when you have figure out a really good way to make somone cry.

Yes, that would work exceedingly well. Let's just run around shooting people, and thus make almost every parcel of land restricted access.

I imagine someone who abuses the AR feature quickly becomes "the boy who cried wolf" and the ARs they send in, the more they send in, will go ignored. But that's just my belief.

Taking out the AR feature would be a horrible thing to do just because a few use it improperly.

It's like taking out llTeleportAgentHome. Just because some people choose to not use it as they are supposed to, doesn't mean that it should go away for those of us who do use it correctly.

Perhaps a new rule, that if you do so many false ARs, you get punished yourself. Might make people provide more evidence when possible than making blatantly false accusations.

What's horrifying to me is that people are assuming that they know who was disciplined.

Now, let's assume, as Jake is here, that it was the folks he thinks are such monsters. 7 people being disciplined in one day would seem to not support the claim that the the ToS is underenforced.

What's horrifying to me, is listening to folks who claim to be dissenters, who will brook no dissenting opinion with regard to their own dissent (without going into a "personal attack" claiming frenzy).

Whoa, you're right about the discipline. I haven't looked at the blotter in awhile, but there it is. I wonder who got pwned.



Date: Friday, September 2, 2005
Violation: Forum Formal Warning: Disclosure: Second Life
Region: —
Description: Formal forum warning for disclosing personal information.
Action taken: Warning issued.

Date: Friday, September 2, 2005
Violation: Forum Formal Warning: Personal Attacks
Region: —
Description: Formal forum warning for personal attacks.
Action taken: Warning issued.

Date: Friday, September 2, 2005
Violation: Forum Suspension: Personal Attacks
Region: —
Description: 3 day suspension for an intolerant and inflammatory personal attack in the forums.
Action taken: Suspended 3 days.

Date: Friday, September 2, 2005
Violation: Forum Informal Warning: Spamming, Trolling, Flaming
Region: —
Description: Informal forum warning against spamming.
Action taken: Warning issued.

Date: Friday, September 2, 2005
Violation: Forum Formal Warning: Intolerance
Region: —
Description: Forum warning for intolerant personal attack.
Action taken: Warning issued.

Date: Friday, September 2, 2005
Violation: Forum Informal Warning: Spamming, Trolling, Flaming
Region: —
Description: Informal forum warning against spamming.
Action taken: Warning issued.

Date: Thursday, September 1, 2005
Violation: Forum Formal Warning: Personal Attacks
Region: —
Description: Formal warning for inflammatory personal attacks in the forums.
Action taken: Warning issued.

People could... just... stop... flamming/trolling/personal attacking. But then again I live in a world where puppies and kittens eat lollypops under rainbows with magical unicorns flying high above.

An archipelago of abusive areas and armed attackers. Sounds like a brilliant plan. When you put it like that, it almost makes me wish I'd been serious.

Take your unicorn and shove it, happy man.

I would say junk it. I used to live in a sim with a neighbor who could best be described as that old lady down the street who would call the cops for every thing and anything. It got to point were you almost couldn't rez a cube with out this dear neighbor being on the line to the lindens.
My other neighbor was set up so many times by this person for nothing. They could paper the walls with the notes from the lindens. The lindens would never listen to any other people who tell them this person was wrong to call them. I agree it's a system used as a way for people to harass others. If you have a real gripe take the extra few minutes and a send email to customer support.

Rox

Really? I never have seen it used as a harassment tool--I only ever use it if someone randomly shoots me and breaks teleporting. More often, I just politely (don't laugh) ask them to stop whatever is bothering me.

Perhaps having punishments for abusing the form might be good.

EXCELLENT about the discipline on personal attacks in the forums.

As for getting rid of the AR system, how the heck could anybody protect themselves from anything? The tools are pretty lame as it is.

coco

Well, I just found out who got one of those formal warnings (and was pretty surprised). Anyone else want to fess up and share their tales of discipline? This is pretty interesting. Of all the dramas lately, I'm a little surprised the MJW business was enough to bring out a switch from the Linden tree.

Now that I know what's been happening to my lollypops, I will abuse report the animals' owners.

Thanks for the tip, Oz,

Well, I got yelled at when I push banned a guy who kept on pushing me, but that mostly made sense. Of course, I scripted MY push banner, and he just bought it.

Sucker

Khamon, any particular reason you made this a public poll?

In what way does consistently abuse reporting people who shoot you with push guns and cause you to have to restart the program resemble griefing?

These public polls must be a good source of contacts for those who wish to grind the ax political.

There is one huge problem with the AR reporting.

The actual entry of this reporting into the database is done by hand. It's not automated.

Which makes it rather amusing to receive a disciplinary email from Linden Labs about three months ago telling me that "you've been warned" after a research of the chat logs and server history about having attacked a person with loud music and objects in a simulator that I never have visited. At that time, it had been five months since I logged into SL.

It was quite the amusing incident.

I was told it was an error. The email and warning was rescinded.

Which makes me wonder why the AR reporting isn't automatically entered into a database. It makes me wonder about the manual hours that are needed to check out each AR report; it makes me wonder why something that involves the incredible amount of manhours isn't somehow coded for more efficient use of time.

Then again, this makes SL far more amusing.

You know, I find this highly amusing that the individuals you have outlined above with your opinion of apparent contempt of their actions might actually be cyber-clients of yours. It's very apparent that you prefer playing sheriff and policeman rather than esquire in SL.

Sweet irony. Insult and bite the hand that might actually need your service. Glad to see that you're keeping your opinions of your future clients close to your chest.

Oh, and this isn't a personal attack. It's a reminder to use a spellchecker if you want to seem more reasonably professional in stature.

I do recall, over a year ago , getting an warning about an abuse report - an abuse report I had filed myself.

It would seem to be rather sensible to have the reports automatically entered into a database . It doesn't sound like much work. I suppose they must spend so much time fighting the alligators they can't drain the swamp.

If you manage to get the abuse reporting tools scrapped, I'm going to come grief you every day... for a month! And then what'll you do about that, abuse report me???

But seriously, you see my point. If there are no consequences, there's nothing to stop you.

I'm confident the community would react by creating a commonly shared and moderated list of abusers banned from everyone's land.

Eh, isn't that a lot like the current suspension/ban method ?

My point: if it weren't for the A/R system, it'd have to be implemented in another shape.

of course they shouldn't eliminate it. presumably you'd rather people just go whine personally to any Linden online? and then have everyone back here bitching that abuse handling was even more inconsistently handled? Uhuh. I see how that'd make everything better, sure.